FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[Trin9-0]

Bowdoin had a nice season in which they had 1 quality win (and even then they needed 7 Amherst turnovers). Other than that they beat two average teams, Middlebury and Tufts, by a combined 3 points. They beat the bottom-feeders, Bates, Wesleyan and Hamilton, and they lost to the top 2 teams, Trinity & Colby.

I agree that Caputi is doing a great job turning that program around but lets not go overboard because of 1 season.

As for Colby, I have no problem with their schedule. I understand that they can only beat the teams they play. The problem is that they don't consistently beat the better teams in the league. And a 7-1 or 6-2 record with Trinity and/or Williams off the schedule isn't really comparable to the 7-1 or 6-2 record of a school who had to play both (especially Amherst who plays the Bants and Jeffs back to back).

By the way that 6-2 Bowdoin record was with Williams off the schedule. Expect the Bears to finish no better than 4-4 this year. 

[bant551]

Trin8-0... I just think they gotta be considered up there with Williams because head-to-head, they've done the job twice against Williams recently and probably haven't been as shaky against the lower-ranked teams as Williams has been.

My analysis would be COMPLETELY different if they had the same records but Williams beat them all 4 times.  But with a head-to-head split, I'd have to say Colby deserves to be considered at least on the same level. 

Its a shame that Colby is one of the rotating teams for Trinity and I guess Williams.  Thats definitely a huge advantage for arguing Williams' 6-2 (or whatever) is superior to a Colby 6-2 when they don't play, if all you have to go on is strength-of-schedule in any given year.

[nescac1]

Trinity's star Michael Blair has been named an assistant at Williams.  Perhaps he'll provide some useful scouting on how to score on his old mates ... but with a new coaching staff coming in, I imagine that won't be much of a factor.  Still, a nice hire of a guy who certainly knows how to play. 

On another note, Dave Barnard (whose comments on admissions have been discussed here at great length) is no longer the Ephs baseball coach / football assistant.  In the press release announcing the new coach, there is no explanation of why. 

[bant551]

He took time off to write a book about how unfair the world is.

[LinemenRathletes2]

so Barnard was replaced on the football coaching staff by Blair? is that not poetic justice.... replaced by the star player of the team that he was obviously attacking for their percieved 'deviant SAT standards'. I love it.

[frank uible]

So far it has been announced that Williams has 3 new football coaches with 2 known to be departing. It is not clear from reading last year's coaching assignments against the 2006 ones (to the extent they have been announced) who exactly is replacing whom. Last year Barnard coached TEs/kicking game. Williams has not announced who will undertake those responsibilities in 2006. However it has been announced that Blair will coach DLs. Last year's DL coach returns. Sounds like there will be some shuffling of assignments.

[bant551]

Blair is a great kid and one of the hardest-to-block interior D-lineman I ever had to block against (along with Rooney), and that was when he was a Freshman!  Not only is he a physical specimen, he was a workhorse and appeared very coachable (I was on the other side of the line, so we didn't work together).

I think this type of arrangement is fairly normal.  When I was at Trinity, there was former captain at Williams, who got his first coaching job at Trinity for a few years, then went back to Williams.  I think its a good way to break into your first job, already being familiar with the league, but not being so familiar to the situation like when you coach your former team that its too comfortable (or uncomfortable for the coach to berate his former player or anything like that, which will inevitably happen).  Also, you get exposure to more than one coaching staff (but if you were like the kids in the year above me at Trinity, you've seen 3 different coaching staffs in four years and don't need to leave your former team to be exposed to different schemes!).

Best of luck to Blair.  He's got an advantage from the get-to: he isn't going to cry about how unfair things are when they aren't going well --  he will be a force for positive change when things aren't going well, through hard work and learning the coaching game.

[speedy]

so Barnard was replaced on the football coaching staff by Blair? is that not poetic justice.... replaced by the star player of the team that he was obviously attacking for their percieved 'deviant SAT standards'. I love it.

Definitely poetic justice. I wonder whether Barnard was shown the door as a result of the crazy letter or whether he wrote the letter after he knew he was toast. Either way, the letter was definitely out there . .

[chessdoc]

sounds like bates has some great new coaches, congrats to them

[Nescacfan05]

Don't know how much that will help....Not that the OC is much write home about...

[chessdoc]

meaning what??? looks good to me what am i missing?

[dirtybirds8-0]

Coaching is about 1/4 of the equation in football....you still have to get the other 3/4 to be dominant. 

Factor in:

Player quality

Training program

Confidence

If you have all the pieces then there is nothing to worry about...you will be sucessful....Bates does not have all the pieces.

[Trin9-0]

The new coaches at Bates are about what you would expect for this level of football, especially at a program that hasn't had much of a tradition of success. The OC appears to have coached at some good programs, but has no prior experience as a coordinator.

Dence was the wide reciever and special teams coach at Yale (also coached tight ends for 2 years), a linebacker coach and video coordinator at Amherst in 2001, he coached the offensive line and tight ends at Springfield College in 1999 and 2000 and worked with the 1998 King's College secondary. It will be interesting to see how he does in his first job as an OC.

By comparison Chris Rorke, the new OC at Trinity, is coming from Lehigh where he was the coordinator of an offense that led the Patriot League in scoring, total offense, passing offense, and first downs in 2004 and 2005. Also possessing Division III head coaching experience, Rorke served as head coach at Plymouth State College from 1999 to 2002 and guided the Panthers to a league championship title in 2001 and an ECAC Northeast title in 1999.

Prior to Plymouth State, Rorke was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Illinois Wesleyan University, and that team won a pair of league titles and reached the NCAA Division III Quarterfinals in 1996. He also served as the wide receivers coach for three years and was an offensive assistant coach at 1990 NCAA Division I-A National Co-Champion Georgia Tech for two seasons.

The best part is that the offense Rorke runs is very similar to the offense Trinity has been running the past few seasons with no huddle, a single back, multiple formations and personnel. Should be a great fit for the Bants.


dirty: I think that "player quality" is a far more important factor than "confidence". Coaching, and certainly off-season preparation can make the difference when talent is comparable but confidence is a far less important component.

[dirtybirds8-0]

Trin8-0:

While I do not disagree with the fact that player quality is far more important than confidence.  You will have to agree that confidence plays a huge role in most sporting events.  This fact is evident when looking at what Trinity has been able to do since 2003 when Trinity finally beat Williams for the first time in howver many years.  Knowing that Trinity could beat Williams made them look less intimidating and more mortal.  I would assume that players from other teams in the league now look at Trinity as a very intimidating presence, and the game is sometimes over before it begins.

Confidence is also attractive to recruits who want to be part of a team that knows or at least thinks they will go undefeated every year!

[bant551]

Confidence is huge.  Of course you go into every game with an expectation of winning (or at least NOT being AFRAID of losing, even if you are realistically an underdog), but the confidence thing is huge.

In 2002, we expected that we probably should beat Amherst if we played a very good game.  We played a very good game, and won very narrowly.  I gotta say though, until we FINALLY knocked them off, it was still extremely intimidating going into the game.  Not because you feel you can't beat the guy accross from you, but because history is working against you.  Its a clear psychological advantage.

It doesn't happen by being beaten by a team once, but it does when it starts to become a yearly occurrence (I don't remember when the last time Trinity beat Amherst was, but I think it was like 6 years by the time the 2002 season came along).

Thats why, when analyzing Colby, I'd say they've "arrived" in beating Williams twice.  That means when they play now, it'll still be a huge, nerve-racking game... but it won't be that kind of "we better be absolutely perfect, because we haven't beaten this team in 8 years" types of deals.